Not So Butch

“An illustrated true tale of a queer femme looking for love in all the wrong places.”

My roommate is super into zines and has become obsessed with them due to a past relationship he had. This is one of the few zines he has let me read that didn’t make me want to claw my own eyes out from how pretentious it was (not all zines are pretentious, most aren’t, just the ones he likes).

It was a quick read, less than five minutes, but it is one I would come back to again and again. It was a very quick look at how the author attempted to be butch to get femme girls to fall for her, but she is not butch so it didn’t work. This is a common issue in the femme community from what I have been able to see. The femme/butch dynamic is a powerful one, that isn’t just from the 1950’s. It goes into the whole idea of who is a visible lesbian. Too femme and no one believes you are gay, but too butch and no one will see you as anything but gay. Where does you real identity get to come into play if you want to be seen as gay, but not be only gay especially when you are femme.

I am envious of the author’s art style. I wish I could illustrate and/or draw the way she does. Overall, this is something people should read. I want to read more by her and I will be hunting down her books next time I can get to the library or even more shockingly, I might even order them and pay for them.